พฤติกรรมการเลือกซื้อมะขามแปรรูปของผู้บริโภคในเขตเทศบาล นครเชียงใหม่

Abstract

This study had two main objectives. Firstly, it focused on consumers’ behavior pertaining to their behavior on buying processed tamarind in Chiang Mai Municipality. Secondly, it was to determine factors affecting their purchase decision. The total sample size used in the study was 400 consumers randomly selected through accidental sampling method. They comprised of 206 and 164 processed tamarind purchasers and non-purchasers respectively. Data collection was administered by questionnaires. Descriptive statistics included frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation were used for data analysis pertaining consumers’ behavior. The study also applied binary logistic regression analysis for investigating factors affecting consumers’ decision on purchasing processed tamarind. The study revealed that approximately 65 percent of respondent who answered the questionnaire was female with age between 18 – 35 years (approximately 60%) and marital status (approximately 50%). About 72 percent of them held bachelor degree. Major characteristics of purchasers included their salary ranged between 15,001 – 20,000 THB (approximately 27%) and being business owner (approximately 29%). These processed tamarind purchasers lived not more than 5 kilometers away from nearest processed tamarind store. Moreover, the study on buying behavior of processed tamarind purchasers revealed that most consumers (approximately94%) bought processed tamarind at convenience stores. The consumers bought processed tamarind because it has a good taste. They bought for their owned consumption and bought them after six o’clock in the evening. Almost half of the purchasers could not specify their frequency of buying processed tamarind. About 94 percent of the purchasers could easily find place to buy processed tamarind. They bought many type of processed tamarind. (Most of them (almost 96 percent) bought processed tamarind in the form of tamarind admixed with sugar and favor additives.) The most popular processed tamarind packaging among purchasers was the tightly sealed plastic bottle. Generally, 87 percent of purchasers had never seen any advertisement about processed tamarind. However, the way that make purchasers know more about processed tamarind was through word of mouth. According to purchasers’ response to the marketing mix, appropriate price levels, cheap price, product cleanliness, no foreign materials (especially ant), specification of producing and expire date, closeness of distributing store to their homes, store cleanliness, and accuracy in calculating the cost of the purchase could influence purchasers’ decision to buy processed tamarind products. Majority of non-processed tamarind purchasers (34 percent) raised dislike taste of tamarind, fear of the diarrhea and fear of gaining weight due to high sugar contentas the reasons for not buying processed tamarind. Even though there would be an improvement of the product quality and taste in the future, majority of the non-processed tamarind purchasers (74 percent) would not intend to buy them. Because they do not like processed tamarind and believe that the processed tamarind products do not contribute to better health. The study on consumers’ knowledge about processed tamarind and their health consciousness realization demonstrated that the processed tamarind purchasers had statistically higher knowledge about processed tamarind than the non-purchasers’ group. On the other hand, the non-purchasers’ group had statistically higher level of health anxiety than their counterpart. The processed tamarind purchasers pointed that they faced the problems of different prices of processed tamarind in different stores for the size of the product, few choices on product sizes and prices, unavailable marketing information and advertisement, and unavailable document on usefulness of processed tamarind when they bought the products The study on factors affecting consumers’ decision on buying processed tamarind depicted that the factors statistically contributed to decision to buy processed tamarind included being female consumers and owning higher knowledge about processed tamarind. On the other hand, the factors statistically contributed to decision not to buy processed tamarind included higher age and level of health anxiety of the consumers. The older and the higher health anxiety would lead consumers not to buy processed tamarind. Based on the above findings, processed tamarind distributors or manufacturers should put their efforts on distributing knowledge and information about processed tamarind to the consumers. Especially, information about benefit of consuming processed tamarind should be the main concern. Moreover, attempt should be spent on convincing the consumers to understand that consuming processed tamarind would not cause any bad effect on their health.